


King of the Mountain

by honeymilk2005



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Aged-Up Frisk (Undertale), Angst and Tragedy, Asgore Dreemurr Needs a Hug, Child Death, Child Loss, Frisk (Undertale) Is a Sweetheart, Gen, Gender-Neutral Chara (Undertale), Gender-Neutral Frisk (Undertale), Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Mentioned Chara (Undertale), Minor Asgore Dreemurr/Toriel, Nonbinary Chara & Frisk (Undertale), Nonbinary Chara (Undertale), Nonbinary Frisk (Undertale), Other, Post-Divorce, Sad Asgore (Undertale), Sweetheart Asriel Dreemurr, Tragedy, Young Asriel Dreemurr, even if its tear inducing-ly sad, im sorry but i love asgore so much i had to write something for him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:21:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28574442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeymilk2005/pseuds/honeymilk2005
Summary: Frisk decided to stay. Asgore may have burnt them, but he's the one burning alive, and Frisk was never one to leave someone when they're in agony. it's been 5 months underground with Asgore, and realizations come and go. they've already seen the coffins, and they've already heard the story, but they play the priest in the confessional booth anyway, because the only difference between a Priest and a Judge is that the Priest promises a sort of holy sense of reprieve to what they spill in confessional booths without glaring eyes to bare them down, scorched bones and all against the sun and hazy white fur.the Judge promises justice, and this has always applied to the ones who spill sin like cocktails at business parties, regardless of faith in that sense of balm.Asgore doesn't deserve any more judgment than he gives himself.it's time to forgive, and if he won't forgive himself, Frisk will for him.
Relationships: Asgore Dreemurr & Frisk, Asgore Dreemurr/Frisk, but like yeah i just wanted to write about their dynamic <3, frisk IS in their 20s in every work i write unless said explicitly otherwise though, i wont tolerate pedophilia, mostly cause i didn't think about it beforehand HJJHM, not inherently romantic so do whatever, regardless of whether platonic or romantic
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	King of the Mountain

**The king's** hands are always warm and broad, soft silky fur covering the hidden ridges of old scarring underneath with the strands long enough to cover up the ones thin enough that stretch across his knuckles, littering his fingers and across his palms like stains he couldn't scrub out from one thing or another, scarred lines pushed into his skin like the lines on vinyl records. but despite this, his touch is soft enough to break under. one might associate that with violence, but I don't mean it painfully. He holds so much, and yet his touch is always soft, gentle enough to startle, sweet and warm.

 _he_ is sweet and warm.

the human realized that early enough.

the human- **Frisk** has realized much about the King, how the fur around his neck and hands is the softest, how he takes his tea- golden flower -with 5 cubes of sugar _[and how they'd said how surprising it was that he could drink such sickeningly sweet tea, which made him laugh, a ruling thundering sound but with the warmth of his voice sounds more like the roar of a fire, cracking of a hearth. they've always liked his laugh.]_ how he routinely repairs his armor- scarcely does it need repairing, but he tells them its good to keep a good image, so even without damage, the looks matter just as much as the purpose. they suppose he's right, but sometimes, when polishing the metal, his eyes go dazed and unseeing and he stops and stares at nothing, his hands stop and his shoulders shake. Frisk knows why, they try to discourage him, but he laughs it off. he always does. 

but the laugh doesn't rumble or run with warmth like veins in soil, then. they sometimes wonder if he can tell they're not fooled. _sometimes,_ they suppose, _sometimes._

Asgore learned the same about Frisk, how they take their tea and which they like best- _they like dandelion tea with two cubes of sugar, three if it's been a long day._ That they prefer butterscotch but will not turn up their nose should cinnamon be put on their plate. how they like to talk to themselves aloud, and sometimes when they're alone sounds like they're talking to someone else. how they love the taste of the cinnamon bunnies in Snowdin or the crab apples of Waterfall, how they like the taste of spider cider and how they half only like them because of how _elated_ Muffet looks when they buy. how they like to hold the containers of the SOULs whenever Asgore brings them out, hugging them to their chest like comforts to those long gone. how they always seem ready to learn something new, even if it's simply the name of a plant, and how they're not above trying to get their hands on one of those plants for Asgore. how Frisk will gladly stomach Papyrus's spaghetti to make him happy and encourage him to keep going, or how Frisk will drop _anything_ to help others. how Frisk knows how to sew and often finds themself repairing his cape when they noticed rips or tears that were left untreated, given Asgore's fingers were not made to thread needles. _he still calls them a child, despite being reminded they aren't._

Asgore learned of the child's kindness, and he tries so hard not to think about their coffin in the basement. he doesn't know they've already seen it.

Frisk nursed him back into his own home, no longer too quiet to bear with them there, no longer empty endlessly without use. _he falls asleep in his bed, again. he laughs at the jokes Frisk loves supplying, again. he tries his hand at cooking, again._ and _yes,_ the latter often ends in burnt food, Frisk always jumps to the chance to taste it and help.

_there are times when Asgore's hands waver,_ trembling with fretting fingertips that flit with nerves for someone who's no longer there but that the human reminds him of vaguely but sure-footed enough to puncture wounds in a tapioca heart. anxiety pulling in his knuckles like tea sloshing around in the inside of a teapot, _too sweet to swallow and going cold._ Frisk never understood why he liked golden flower tea so deeply, it took so long to make, boiling for two days- or was it three?\- and in the end, it was bitter and tasted vaguely like lemons, but in these moments they understand. when his periwinkle eyes glaze over when he looks at them when his shoulders and his chest shakes and he **chokes up** every apology he's been practicing for decades for someone who's **not them** for something they **didn't do** but that doesn't matter.

Frisk plays the priest in the confessional anyway, listens and holds their breath steady as the King bows his head and the weight of everything he's ever held presses down on his shoulderblades, each SOUL a world of their own and each rested on his backbone like gems in the crown- _he weeps and Frisk doesn't stop him._ Frisk lets Asgore see not who they are and instead who Asgore needs them to be, they let him hold them as he used to hold someone else and it's so gentle to make rose petals blush, or so tight to make their ribs creek like the floorboards of a house Asgore hasn't slept in years- _they too often still find him asleep on his throne._

their body is never the same as the person he's trying to hold, _pouring_ confessions of agony that haven't been said since the flowers started growing and apologies mixed into one another like tea into teacups till they overflow with all the years he's been _hoping on **nothing**_ but the fact he _needs_ to hope- _he **has** to hope,_ he doesn't have a choice.

Frisk's body is always too bulky limbed, too much scarring, and too much muscle from fighting their way through the underground baring their teeth **so fiercely** they might need to see a dentist. their body is too small in comparison and not soft enough to mimic the woman they met in the ruins, her hugs felt like smooth fabric and softness, and the moments in the early morning when you're trying to decide what pie filling to use in hopes to have it finished before the other woke. but they hug him back as **_tightly_ **as she used to, arms as broad as hers _even if they aren't as soft,_ and they don't smell like clean linen and spices and sweet cream, but it's enough to make his shoulders shake.

Frisk's body isn't lean and almost-sharp at the edges with ribs prominent under the skin like theirs and they don't have the skin hue the same color as birchwood, they're not as tall as the _smiling_ face in the photographs with _**the locket**_ used to be and they don't have the same long hands for a young age that used to grip to Asgore's fur or ball the fabric of his clothes in their hands like _desperation never to let them go,_ and they always smelled like lemons. Frisk is much too squared for that, muscle where there should be lanky limbs with a smaller frame and not-as-broad shoulders and different eyes, but they're close enough when they grip at his chest to make him sob.

Frisk's body isn't small and covered in the same _soft silky fur_ as Asgore's and rounder, they're not as small as the prince was and they lack the soft ears and the barely-there stubs of what might've been horns but they won't know now. they don't have the barely-there hay-yellow gleam to their hair like he had when it slowly started gaining the same color as Asgore's, and nor are they as small and soft and young as he was with laughter and tears flowing _just as freely_ and he used to be **_such_ **a happy boy and always looking for the hold of his parents when he felt _safest,_ and they might be too big and too quiet to be like him but they can burrow in his arms **just as deeply** that Asgore doesn't know the difference when his arms curl around Frisk pressed so deep against his chest they can barely see the lighting through Asgore's arms holding them _so close like he's holding on for his life-_ _not Asgore's._

sometimes the people he's holding aren't of family or lovers but rather _the corpses of the children that Frisk followed in their wake_ that he was _**always** _the one to carry, each body was different but cold the same as they'd reach the basement. there are remains of their consciousness in old things they used to hold littered through the underground and Asgore hopes **_so desperately_** that they are not awake in those pretty glass jars.

_Frisk is not the same,_ but they're close enough to fool his sorrow into thinking through eyes _pierced_ by his own horns obscuring what's really there, ears ringing **too hard** to hear how Frisk's voice is any different from how any of _theirs_ were. and they're gone now, but Asgore still tells them _how sorry he is_ all the same with the fur around his eyes darkened grey with his tears, _he still tells them of how he's sorry he couldn't save them and how he **should have** been there, how **he knows** he won't be forgiven for all that he's done, how he wished they would have **run** , how he wished that there was another way to go **home** , how he wished they'd have been **content to stay** , how he wishes he could change things back to how they were._

**_but he can't._ **

_and these people he is holding are nothing but phantoms of unimaginable grief that saturates him so thoroughly he drips the same as a cloth too full of water to hold it all. _

_and these people aren't there to tell him whether or not they forgive him for what he's done but Frisk always does in their stead because they don't think he could bear to hear they didn't._

_**and these people are gone.** _

Frisk plays their role if for _nothing_ but relieving some of the pain built up over centuries in the arms of a ruler who's carrying an entire species on his back knowing _full well_ if there's one wrong step their extinction is absolute. Frisk acts as the priest to the sinning man in the quiet rundown church as he weeps and holds them tight to their chest and cries so hard he shakes, **_and sometimes he wails_** but Frisk bares the noise because Asgore has bared _**too much** in the name of **everyone else** except **himself-**_

_there are times when Asgore's hands waver._


End file.
